Classic Poem

Morbidly languid, through long summer hours
She lay like some pale rose by dawn dews wet,
Dreaming amid a mass of mignonette,
Delicious roses and frail Orient flowers.

To cloy her whims insatiable, my powers
Were taxed before her dainty feet to set
An Eden of odorous pink and violet—
The sweetest plunder of a hundred bowers.

Ghoul-like she fattened in this flowerful Hell
That numbed my sense with sickening perfume,
Until my soul rebelled and would not bow. . . .
She now lies crowned with phlox and asphodel,
Deep in her chamber's suffocating gloom,
With one great rose of blood upon her brow!